Guidance for education settings about establishing ‘appropriate levels of filtering’
he DfE’s statutory guidance, ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’, outlines what schools on and off line safeguarding responsibilities. It obliges schools to “ensure appropriate filters and appropriate monitoring systems are in place. Children should not be able to access harmful or inappropriate material from the school or colleges IT system”. In addition, schools in England (and Wales) are required to ensure children are safe from terrorist and extremist material when accessing the internet in school, including by establishing appropriate levels of filtering”.
Furthermore, Ofsted concluded that “Pupils in the schools that had ‘managed’ systems had better knowledge and understanding of how to stay safe than those in schools with ‘locked down’ systems”. And overall, pupils are more vulnerable when schools use locked-down systems. Pupils need an appropriate filtering environment with opportunities to learn how to assess and manage risk for themselves. However, “schools need to be careful that “over blocking” does not lead to unreasonable restrictions as to what children can be taught…”
E2BN Protex web filter complies with the DfE’s guidance and holds the Safer Internet Centre Appropriate Filtering self-certification. E2BN Protex effectively prevents pupils from accessing harmful content but without being overly restrictive. Differentiated age and role profiles ensure that all users have an appropriately filtered web experience.
Most schools use our fully managed service web filtering service. We configure and set up user profiles and manage block and unblock requests on your behalf. E2BN Protex5 is also available as a self-manged deployment for schools wishing to take an more hands-on approach to filtering. We provide free training and ongoing support for self-manged schools.
We remotely monitor all E2BN Protex deployments.